Nearly all currently available driver assistance systems based on data provided by environment monitoring sensors use an object abstract environment model. Typically an object list of surrounding objects is provided. Such an approach does not cover areas where no objects are present and which define a potential maneuvering space. In the field of research, approaches are known which use sensors providing space occupancy information about a defined area surrounding the vehicle and entering said information on a space occupancy map. Such a representation permits indirect estimations of the available maneuvering space. A disadvantage of this method, however, is that the space occupancy map (occupancy grid) contains large amounts of data which are currently too large to be usable in a commercial application, since the bandwidths provided by typical CAN connections for the communication between control devices are not sufficient for real-time transmission.